ROME (CNS): Some 180 migrants, most from Eritrea, arrived at Mondo Migliore, a Catholic-run centre near Rome late on August 28 after officials from the Italian Bishops’ Conference negotiated their release from the Italian coast guard ship, Ubaldo Diciotti.

ROME (CNS/Agencies): “The path to saving our very humanity from vulgarity and barbarism passes through a commitment to safeguarding life. Every life. Beginning with that which is most exposed, humiliated and trampled upon,” the Italian Bishops’ Conference said in a July 19 statement after a woman survivor and two bodies were recovered from the wreck of a migrant boat in the Mediterranean Sea.

ROME (CNS): Tweeting with hashtags that translate as “Closed ports” and “Open hearts,” Matteo Salvini, the interior minister of Italy, disputed claims that the Italian government was complicit in leaving a migrant to die in the Mediterranean Sea as she clung to a board from a destroyed fishing boat.

Salvini strongly supported Italy’s policy of having the Libyan coast guard patrol its own shores, pushing back refugee boats or taking the migrants and refugees back to camps in Libya.

One morning a couple of years ago, while I was at home editing an article, somebody rang my doorbell.

It was not a good sign, because people in Rome usually make house calls by first buzzing the intercom at the entrance of the apartment building. Those who are already inside and show up directly at someone’s door are often trying to sell something.